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Winemaker and I have been invited by Tracker and Bones to join them in helping feed the elk up at Hardware Ranch this morning! I’ve never done it before so it will be a fun time. Winemaker will be in charge of pictures and I’ll post some up when we get back!

In the mean time it looks like a gorgeous day to be out in the mountains!

The other day I told you about this little device called “The Spitter”, I have decided it should be called “The Water Spitter” and I’m about to tell you why I think that.

I also told you that someday I would like to try my hand at making one and trying it out on the ice. Today was that day!

I found a 2 pound coffee can out in the shed, and also found a small coiled up piece of small copper tubing. What more do I need?

I drilled a hole the size of the copper tubing in the side of the can, very near the bottom, poked the copper tubing through it from the inside out, leaving about 4 inches sticking out and then carefully coiled up the copper tubing inside the can about 4 coils. Draped the rest out over the upper edge of the can almost directly above the pipe coming out the bottom of the can.

Then I soldered the pipe to the can as best as I know how to solder.

I have an old metal kitchen pot I use to boil animal skulls in and I grabbed that, put a rock in it and then filled it about half way with water. I set the can with coils on top of the rock so the small tube coming out the bottom of the can is under water and the tube extending over the top of the can came out and over the side of the big pan.

It doesn’t look too impressive, but I just wanted to see if it would work or if I had been scammed again!

I put in a few briquets and lit them up!

When the coals got hot things began to happen on the outside of the tube!

There are all kinds of devices out there to assist fisher people (men, women, kids) catch fish. I’ve shown you a few lately and will continue to show you new stuff as I encounter it. The latest thing is something I was telling Weasel about but I could not remember what it was called. I found it again today, but unfortunately there have not been any Youtube videos posted, so, you will have to copy the web link and paste it on a new tab in order to see what it is all about.

It’s called “The Fish Elevator” and you can order yours on

http://www.thefishelevator.com/

Before going on and buying one, you probably want to see how it works. There is a series of “catches” on the main dot com web site listed above, but the second video shows this guy catching a very big fish, which is nice because the fish elevator guys needed this as a testimony to its usefulness.

Looking at this picture makes you realize there must be some very tall people who like to ice fish! So, once you have the hole drilled through the ice, there is no way for you to get your line down into the depths of the water unless you clear out all the slushy stuff and ice chunks left from the drilling process.

Most of us have a scoop like this one:

They work really well, are very inexpensive and some even have handles that will float should you drop it in the hole. Mine don’t…but I’ve never dropped one yet.

Well, I ran across a new devise that makes the job of scooping out the ice quicker. Watch this video:

Pretty slick I’d say!

So, here you are ice fishing, is it cold outside? Usually and of course the water in your open ice fishing hole will begin to freeze over. You are constantly using your ice scoop to keep it open. Again, in my searches on the web, I run across a lot of great ideas and here are a couple more.

These would be very useful if you are fishing when it is EXTREMELY cold outside, or where you might be using two or more poles, maybe even one of them with a Jaw Jacker setup. The Jaw Jackers don’t allow you to clear the ice in the hole without undoing the setup and moving it away from the hole. This idea would free you up from any ice buildup whatsoever.

Now you know how to make one, what do you do with it?

I took this picture off the internet. So, it shows keeping the ice clear from two holes and I suppose if you were using one hole for your fish finder and the other to fish from this would work perfectly. It certainly makes sense to me and reminds me of a time fishing a tourney, where we had to try and keep our fish alive until an official could come and measure them. We drilled a hole in the ice about a foot deep, near one of our ice fishing holes and channeled the water into that hole. We called it the “Hog Trough”! Another story.

Back on track. So the distance from the coffee can to the hole would probably have to be fairly close, like maybe a couple of inches…just guessing.

As usual, one thing almost always leads to another and so I did find something called a “spitter”. This is a take off of the coffee can idea, only more elaborate. I just might have to make one of these “just because”…mostly to see if it actually works.

With this being a patent pending idea, I would have to modify it quite a bit and my initial thought is to use the coffee can idea and incorporate the coiled tubing. It appears to me that the lower end of the tubing would protrude out the bottom of the coffee can and would suck cold water up and the heat from withing the coffee can would cause the cold water to get hot and spit out the upper end of the coil…thus the name “spitter”….The spitter end would be aimed at the hole you wanted to keep open and the hot water would surely keep the ice from forming. Great idea!

Some of you are probably thinking….What happened to grabbing your ice auger and a bucket with your pole and bait in it and going fishing? Good thought, but gizmos and stuff are what this world is all about…why keep it simple?

It’s Saturday and time to take some kids ice fishing. I seriously thought it would be a day like New Years Eve day, but not so. Too many other things going on in the kids world. So, as of last night it was Weasel and I with three kids. This morning I awoke to a message saying one of the three kids has backed out, and that might cause one of the other two to back out as well. We will see.

Whatever, and even if it means just Weasel and I are going fishing, so be it!

The game plan calls for Hyrum again, since Pineview didn’t pan out like we thought it would. Hyrum is full of small rainbows and tons of small perch. Any perch over 10 inches that decides they want to bite will be pan fish!

I have a pocket full of quarters and am ready to go! Bring it on! And for any of you out there willing to meet us up at the lake, I will drill holes for free! That’s right, free, the only stipulation is the holes have to be within 30 yards of where we are set up! Come on!

Bears Butt

January 18, 2014

PM REPORT!!!!

Wow! What a great day to be out and about outside! A wonderful day of fishing and after I tell you just the time line that we were out you should be able to understand just how great a day it was.

Can you imagine taking two young kids out fishing and staying from 9:30 until 4:30….ON THE ICE?????? No way! Kids are good for one or two MAYBE three stretching it, but not SIX HOURS!

So, what keeps kids on the ice for that long? Fish! That is the bottom line…fish!

So, it was about 3 that the first talk started coming from the youngest, Cody…when are we going home? Then about 3:30, Kenzie pipes in with, It’s boring, when are we going home? The fish are not biting, let’s go? When are we going?

My response was…in about two hours…you should have heard the whining then! It even made Cole chuckle. By the way, Cole came up to get some free holes! And he hadn’t even been on Bears Butt Dot Com!

Well, as for the fishing! It was fast if you had the right lure in the water….everyone caught at least one fish…well….maybe not Cole….Everyone caught at least ONE quarter fish (we put a qualifier on size today)….well…maybe not Cole….Some of us caught two Quarter fish….Of course not Cole, but he was a good sport about it and gave up his quarters freely (Thanks Cole, you can join us anytime!)!!!!!

So, let’s see some of the fish we caught today! Perch and trout…that is what we caught and lots and lots of bites!

Not too big Kenzie!

Not too big Cody!

Now there you go girl! Nice trout! I’ll pay a quarter for you catching that one!

OH YA! That perch is worth a quarter Cody! Good fish!

Oh my! Grandpa, Bears Butt, how did that fish get the hook into its mouth?

And of course the day would not be complete without showing what Weasel’s $40 Jaw Jacker caught…his first fish on it!

Now that shows you just how “sensitive” you can set those things!

My home made “Butt Jacker” did not even trip, however I did catch a fish while it was set up and ready to strike, the fish just wasn’t big enough to make it go off…design error on my part.

We had a wonderful day on the ice and after the whining stopped about 3:33..the action picked up and suddenly it was 4:30 and time to go!

What a great day with over 75 fish iced and all of them turned back except those that will be used for catfish bait later in the year!

It was a very long time ago when Utah decided to create a muzzeload rifle deer hunt, we were restricted to certain areas within the state to “play” and on this one particular season it was on the Wellsville Wilderness area, quite close to where I live.

The Wellsville Range is beautiful and very much unexplored. It is steep, very steep and it appears from a distance to not have much cover, i.e. trees and such, but I dare someone to venture up there and try to reach the top and have the same attitude once they have reached the summit as when they were at the bottom looking up, about the brush and stuff they have to hike through to get to the summit. All dares are welcome.

So, here Wapiti Dung, Tracker, No Grimace and I were hunting deer. A beautiful Fall time with no bad weather in the forecast and nothing but fun ahead of us.

At this time No Grimace did not have his name, we called him “Rick”…well, because that was/is his name. You have read, or should explore on this site how No Grimace got his name and the rest will be history. This story is not about that, but about something very special that happened on this overnight trip of ours through the wilderness of the Wellsville Range.

Brother Bob, “Just Bob”, dropped us off at a very nice little meadow just a bit north of Mantua (Man-two-a ‘long a’), Utah and we proceeded to hike from that point over to another point where he would pick us up the next day.

We were carrying all our gear in make shift backpacks. Hunting stuff, sleeping stuff, eating stuff…all our stuff for the hunt and over night. Each of us had our assignments to help make it through the ordeal and not everyone needed to be burdened with bringing extra.

One of the things we were each assigned was our lunch for the second day, the day when Just Bob was to pick us up….a LARGE CAN of Vienna Sausages each and of course along with them one will always have some Ritz crackers or at the very least some Saltine crackers.

We were assigned the Large cans, not these little wimpy ones with only 7 units in it.

Count them, their small……..

Now today, 2014, I don’t think they make cans of Vienna sausages as big as they did back then. These cans were short, like todays cans, but big around. They would hold at least 10 Vienna sausages (the picture above shows 13).

When we got to the spot where we would break out our lunches, we stopped and did just that…broke out our lunches.

All four of us had the same thing…a large can of Vienna sausages and some crackers….it sounds very good and it was….at least for the first one and maybe even the second one and for some, even the third one. And then the little sausages which we have come to know of late as “Monkey Dinks” began to fall into that area of “marginal propensity to consume”…they didn’t taste all that great. We were of the mind set that you should not waste stuff, especially food and so we ate………………..and ate………………and ate………and tried to convince ourselves that these little guys were good and good for us….and after a short break….we ate some more.

My mind escapes me if any one of us actually finished their can of those bad boys, but I can tell you I left some for the raccoons and I think I left more than just what was in the can for them as well. Raccoons like the taste of crackers after they have been consumed with Vienna Sausages….nuff said.

So, every year, at least once, I like to take a Vienna sausage on a toothpick and partake of it, just to remind me of how nasty they really are. BUT WAIT!

Today, I found a thread where Vienna Sausages are now being produced with Bourbon flavoring! Oh Ya Baby! Gotta try those bad boys!

And for you Breakfast freaks that need the taste of Maple Flavoring…they have even come out with one for you….Vienna Sausages in maple flavored sauce!

And another that caters to the spicy hot folks out there:

There are other flavors as well and it looks like they are trying to do anything they can to get people to keep eating them. I’m sure there are some out in the world that just love these things and it’s obvious to me they have never been on a back pack trip with nothing to eat but a large can of them with a hand full of crackers.

I’m sorry, but it almost makes me want to throw up a rainbow right now…I gotta go!

Tracker put together a condensed version of the San Juan Bull Elk dream hunt and now it is my pleasure to post it on here for you to see. Keep in mind these are some of the highlights of the hunt and the full video he put together is a must see for those of you close enough to be able to attend a showing coming up in February of this year.

Thank you Tracker for doing this and allowing it to be shown on the world wide web. Thank you too to Weasel for posting it up on Youtube.com.

I have to admit something right now. This morning when I woke up my mind was on what goal I was going to set for myself, that is kind of a given with me. Well, I could not get my mind off of fishing, I even brought the rules of play for the Sulpher Creek ice fishing event into the living room when I brought in our coffee’s.

One thing lead to another and Winemaker asked me if I had ever texted Shipley about the Sulpher Creek event. I hadn’t. And so I grabbed up my phone and sent him a text. Almost immediately Shipley is on the phone talking about Sulpher Creek and how he was planning on going alone if nobody else called. He was glad to hear Weasel and I were going. We talked about Ron Brown as well, and he said he would call Ron and see if he was planning on going and if so, we would take two vehicles, if not, then the three of us would ride in one rig.

Then he told me about his latest fishing trips to Mantua and Pineview and how well he was doing on a new lure he had picked up…a little minnow shaped lure with the hook attached to a beaded chain. Odd. And he went on that the only places you can find them is a single store in Salt Lake and our very own Anglers Den in Roy….My mind said I would take a trip to Roy today.

Shortly after Winemaker went off to work, I finished up my chores and called Weasel. I told him about the “new lure” and asked if he wanted to go with me to Anglers Den (go to their website by clicking on the link on the right side of this story under “blogroll”, they are currently the second one down from the top)….Well, he would tell his clients about his emergency meeting and then he would go.

We found ourselves talking with the owner, Wade Jacklin (who by the way was our guide on the cow elk hunt the day I got mine) about hunting and fishing and he was telling us about his recent trip to Pineview and how he slayed the fish left and right using the little “new lures” we had in our hands. He even showed us a picture of a PILE of perch he caught in just under an hour and a half last weekend! Did I need more? What I’m asking is, did I need more influence than that to make my mind up to go fishing today? NO!

And of course on our drive home, Weasel had to inform his clients that the emergency meeting was going to take the rest of the day! He wanted to go try out the new lures and of course check out Pineview to see if it would be a good choice of a fishing spot for this Saturday, with the kids!

We were on the lake by 12:30! Started in 10 feet deep water and eventually moved out to about 20 feet. We either caught fish or had bites at every depth we tried, drilling at least 8 holes during our move out. Weasel had the most bites as almost every time he dropped his line in he would get a hit. My line just sat there. I did catch two fish and missed a few others, but the most bites were on his line. He even employed his Jaw Jacker and danged if it didn’t go off a bunch of times, but no fish hook ups. Once, I saw the pole bounce after it triggered, but the fish spit it out pretty quickly.

As for quarters….well, even after have over a thousand bites, Weasel only caught two fish…we traded my quarter back and forth until I finally I had it back in the end. He is going to have to train that Jaw Jacker to catch the fish or he will never get it paid for. He still needs 140 fish, before I catch one.

OK, so now you know what’s going on. We are going fishing this Saturday, up to Hyrum with at least Weasels kids and hopefully Windy will go with his kids as well. I haven’t talked to him about this yet.

Then on February 1st, we will be in Evanston Wyoming at Sulpher Creek for their big fish derby.

There just has to be at least one more fishing trip between this Saturday and February 1st don’t you think? My goodness that’s two full weeks of time!

By the way, those new little lures caught all 4 of the fish today. I think we would have been totally skunked without them! Some day I will tell you what they are called and what they look like, until then…Quarters Up! Of course if you happen to find me on the lake sometime I’ll show you what they look like. I never would have purchased one had I not had two people tell me they worked.

This time of year is all about ice fishing. The transition time between hunting and trapping! A good time of year.

And most of you know that Weasel has gone out and spent a ton of money on an automatic hook setter in order to capitalize on my pocketbook….At a rate of $.25/fish, in order for him to recoup his investment it will take him 140 fish to pay himself back for that contraption.

When he said he had it, I told him, via Facebook, that it would not count in the quarters bet….he said it would count. I’m a fair and honest guy and so I will let him use it, he needs all the help he can get. I’m really surprised that he doesn’t use his “two pole” permit card on me to boot. But we have pretty much established that when someone is using two poles that they have to designate which one is the quarter bet pole.

So, again in fairness to Weasel and any other fisherman who cares to bet quarters with me, I will honor his costly investment and hope that he can recover his investment before I get put six feet under. 140 fish will do it, but keep in mind, every time I catch a fish it makes his goal one fish farther away.

So, I’ve just been talking about me and him fishing, he has other buddies that I’m certain he can out fish regularly. I’ll bet he spends more time fishing with them than he does with me, at least until he recovers his investment.

BUT, not to be outdone, and liking to think I can do as well or better than him, I went in search of “Do it Yourself” automatic hook setters and sure enough…I found a good one!

Yesterday, I started looking around the garage and the yard sheds and found all but two of the items needed to put one of these bad boys together and when I got back from town, having spent $4.48 for the two parts I didn’t have, I built one of my own!

This baby is ready for action and to fine tune the trigger does not take very long. I can almost count the number of hooked fish I’ll be catching on my next trip out! I can hardly wait! FISH ON!!!! And dancing to the tune “I’m in the money”!!!!!

The guy’s idea for this DIY rig, has you tying on a looped piece of line at the end eye of your rod and placing that loop over the middle nail and while that does work very well, I found that I can put my end eye on the trigger itself and still get the job done without having a loop that just might get tangled while fighting a fish. I have yet to see if the looped line will be a problem or not.

So, since I have four ice fishing poles, I tried them all and one of them will not work with this setup…it’s too short of a pole. Unless of course I wanted to drill another hole or two closer to the end of the setup. I just might drill those holes…

So, Two of the remaining three poles can be set up using this idea, while the third one has to have a loop of line on it.

Of course any time you build something like this there will be some adjustments that need to be made and some fine tuning here and there. I’m already thinking about taking the trigger assembly apart and making the holes a bit larger so the trigger is more “hairy”.

FOOD! I love food! Especially Breakfast and REALLY ESPECIALLY if it involves steak!

But, today’s breakfast did not have a true steak involved, but the next best thing…a cubed pork steak!

I asked Winemaker if she would like her steak covered in gravy and served atop a piece of toast…she declined, but in my mind I just had to have it!

So, the plan was, hashbrowns, toast, breaded and fried cubed steak and two eggs cooked over medium. Mine would have the addition of “drippins gravy” poured over my meat which of course would be atop my toast.

I went to work making sure I didn’t over salt the main portions and to make sure there were lots of drippins to make the gravy from. Everything turned out perfectly.

So, there I was with the flour all stirred perfectly with the drippins and my thoughts went to the fridge where a cup of buttermilk remained in the carton. I thought, well Bears Butt, you don’t have buttermilk biscuits, so why not make buttermilk gravy? I have never heard of buttermilk gravy…again my mind raced to a new entry to Bears Butt Dot Com…No way could it be a repeat of “kipper/vienna enchiladas”….

And to the flour in the pan, went about a half cup of buttermilk right out of the carton. A few quick stirs and it was ready! MMMMM! It smelled good and my mouth began to water.

After cooking up two eggs for each of us, I served up the concoction and we sat down to eat. Winemakers looked like “breakfast ordinaire”, while mine had a look of something from Moores restaurant! There was a lot of gravy and so I even covered my spuds with it!

The meal was pretty good, but for you out there who might like to try this, I have to tell you the gravy was a bit rich for this kid. If I ever have an inkling to make buttermilk gravy again, I will cut the buttermilk in half using water to dilute it.

Now I really like buttermilk on occasion but this gravy was pretty rich in my opinion, however, if you like that taste, don’t cut it at all, it still wasn’t bad.